The Reassuring Effects (Of Form and Poetry), for four men and four women, the ladies in toe shoes, is supposed to be McIntyre’s serious salute to (ballet) dancing, but it’s merely dull, starting with the music, Antonín Dvorák’s Serenade for Strings in E minor, a poor cousin of Tchaikovsky’s Serenade for Strings in C. Cirio leads it off with the four men, who lift and spread-eagle and generally manhandle her (the ballerina stripped bare by her bachelors — but costume jewelry alongside the similar section in Balanchine’s Rubies). The rest of the half-hour work is done mostly in couples (and mostly the same couples), with the odd “Hey, we can do tours à la seconde and piqué-chaîné sequences and everything!” — which they can, but to no gratifying end. Cirio and Schert got the slow duet; Schert, who’s danced with Alonzo King and ABT, looks to be the company’s best male dancer, but he doesn’t have much to do here beyond presenting Cirio. And though Cirio evinced a lyric line that I didn’t always observe during her four years with Boston Ballet, she, like the program, left me wanting more.

Modern romantics Romeo & Juliet, On Motifs of Shakespeare is less of a statement than a supposition: what if we did it a different way?

States of unrest “Dance is a tool to look at other things,” choreographer Hofesh Shechter told an interviewer, but during the company’s US debut at Jacob’s Pillow last weekend you’d be forgiven for just looking at the fantastically virile dancing.

Funny bones It was the darkly comic offerings of Mats Ek in the middle, and the personable interpretations that gave the evening its distinction.

Dainty cabaret Larry Keigwin’s genial take on the perennially popular theme of the four elements (water, fire, earth, air) didn’t add anything profound to the cosmic intelligence.

Legs plus Aspen Santa Fe Ballet’s program at Jacob’s Pillow last week sampled four choreographers while showing off the dynamic 11-member company.

Review: The Trocks at Jacob's Pillow Seeing Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo a week ago Wednesday in Jacob's Pillow's rustic Ted Shawn Theatre, surrounded by nattering mosquitoes, katydids, and picnickers, was probably no more incongruous than the mission of the company itself.

The Best Boston Dance Stories of 2010 Some of the past year's most interesting dance events recaptured iconic moments in our history, either as usable texts for today's dancers or as a springboard into reinterpretation, parody, and nostalgia.

Lambarena redux All summer long I’ve had the phrase “Do the Lambarena” running through my head, as if it were a dance craze, like the la-dee-dah or the lambada.

The reign in Spain If only the company could return to the local appreciation its international achievement deserves.

LIGHT WAVES: BOSTON BALLET'S ''ALL KYLIÁN'' | March 13, 2013 A dead tree hanging upside down overhead, with a spotlight slowly circling it. A piano on stilts on one side of the stage, an ice sculpture's worth of bubble wrap on the other.

HANDEL AND HAYDN'S PURCELL | February 04, 2013 Set, rather confusingly, in Mexico and Peru, the 1695 semi-opera The Indian Queen is as contorted in its plot as any real opera.

REVIEW: MAHLER ON THE COUCH | November 27, 2012 Mahler on the Couch , from the father-and-son directing team of Percy and Felix Adlon, offers some creative speculation, with flashbacks detailing the crisis points of the marriage and snatches from the anguished first movement of Mahler's unfinished Tenth Symphony.